Spirited

She could not breathe.

He stopped walking and stood shirtless, his chest slathered with blood and war paint. His breechcloth rode low on his hips; leggings were tied around his sinewy thighs and at his knees. He had long legs and long arms, and in his right hand he held a knife.

There was blood on the blade.

She scrabbled away from him; he hurried toward her, transferring his knife to his left hand and showing her his empty right palm. She shook her head wordlessly.

He said to her,
“Mahwah.”

It was the voice.

Soft in her ear, the voice she had heard whispering through the forest.

She cleared her throat, but no sound came out. She tried again to move away from him, slipping in the mud.

He glided easily to her side and grabbed her wrist. He smelled of smoke. He braced himself and pulled her up, grinning faintly as she tried to ensure that her body was shielded from his gaze while at the same time keeping her balance.

Then all thought of herself fled as she caught sight of the scene behind him.

“Once
Upon a
Time…”
is timely again in these retold fairy tales:

THE STORYTELLER’S DAUGHTER
by Cameron Dokey

BEAUTY SLEEP
by Cameron Dokey

Snow
by Tracy Lynn

MIDNIGHT PEARLS
by Debbie Viguié

SCARLET moon
by Debbie Viguié

SUNLIGHT
and SHADOW
by Cameron Dokey

SPIRITED
by Nancy Holder

From Simon Pulse
Published by Simon & Schuster

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SIMON PULSE
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright © 2004 by Nancy Holder
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered
trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Designed by Debra Sfetsios
The text of this book was set in Adobe Jenson.

Printed in the United States of America
First Simon Pulse edition November 2004
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Library of Congress Control Number 2004107972
ISBN 0-689-87063-9

eISBN 978-1-4391-2048-4

To my beautiful and wonderful daughter, Belle Claire Christine Holder, who is a shining spirit.

Nia ktachwahnen, Wauntheet Monnitoow.

It takes a village to write a book. Wneeweh: my editors, past and present: Amanda Berger, Bethany Buck, and Lisa Clancy, who shares my love 1992 version of the film
The Last of the Mohicans
and was the one to say yes. My agent, Howard Morhaim and his assistant Erin Mcghee. Rebecca Morhaim
, Aquai. To
my friends, family, and Kearny Villa Road homies. To my Joys of Research helpers and the women of SF-FW’s. To Liz Cratty, Kym Toia, and Christy Holt. To Daniel Day-Lewis.

As I walk, as I walk
The universe is walking with me
In beauty it walks before me
In beauty it walks behind me
In beauty it walks below me
In beauty it walks above me
Beauty is on every side
As I walk, I walk with Beauty.

Traditional Navajo Prayer

This is a medicine story.
It tells of a Way.
The Way is called “achwahndowagan”
in the language of the People.
The Way is called “love” in the language of Mahwah.
The Way is called “Mahwah” in the language of my spirit.
It is my Way.

—Wusamequin, Medicine Man of the People of the River, in the Land Beyond

Chapter One

The forest was magical, a world Isabella Stevens could never have imagined, a land undreamed of. If anyone had ever told her that such a place existed, she would have called him a liar or a lunatic, despite the fact that such harsh words ought never to pass the lips of a well-bred lady.

Isabella had been carefully brought up. She was the daughter of Surgeon Phillip Stevens, who was an officer and a gentleman in King George’s Royal Army, and she had been trained since infancy to always remember that her behavior reflected directly on him. She had learned her lessons; she was sixteen now, a young woman, and a credit, so she was told, to her family name.

Since the death of her beloved mother, Emily Elizabeth Stevens, Isabella Anne was the only lady to grace Dr. Stevens’s household. Sometimes it seemed a heavy responsibility to take charge of Mamas duties; but today, in the forest, she was glad her father needed her help at his new posting at Fort William Henry. The wildness of the forest excited her. As she looked this way and that, her cheeks warmed with pleasure. Another chestnut curl escaped the circlet
braided atop her head, moist with the May warmth. She tucked it behind her ear, grazing her golden, rose-shaped earbob, and continued to drink in the beauty surrounding her.

With one gray doeskin glove to her broad-brimmed straw hat, she ducked beneath an overhanging branch of brilliant autumn foliage. The colors astonished her. The dead leaves jittered free of the branch, and she raised her face in delight as they showered her with color. Gold and scarlet gleamed like the coats of the four-and-twenty soldiers of the 35th Regiment of Foot, who were escorting her and her father to Fort William Henry. Deep, rich purple glowed like the heather on the misty moors back home in England. Silver sparkled like the silver locket she wore on a black velvet band around her neck. Inside the oval of silver rested two tiny portraits—a miniature of Papa on the left; and on the right, Mama, dead and buried these nine long months.

Entranced, she pressed her other soft leather glove against the cream edging of her pale green, wool traveling cloak. Mrs. Cora DeWitt, a neighbor who had been extraordinarily kind to Isabella and her father back in Albany, had advised her to lace her corset tight, to spare her back as she rode the long hours sidesaddle on her little roan mare, Dulcie. Isabella had done as Mrs. DeWitt suggested, but she was beginning to suspect that she might have overdone it. Her breathing was constricted and she was a trifle dizzy.

She wasn’t certain what to do about it, and unclear if it would be proper to ask her father to help her loosen her stays. But neither was she certain she would be able to manage it on her own.

Three sat on horseback as the company journeyed through the forest. Riding very closely beside her on a bay Galloway gelding was her father. He and Isabella had lived one year in the Colonies.

The third rider was Major Whyte, who had been in the Americas for three years. He was in charge of their escort, and he sat very tall upon his cavalry saddle and thick saddle blanket beneath. His Friesian was pitch black and he guided it expertly with a double bridle. His spine straight as a ramrod, his head high beneath his tricorne hat, he was the perfect British officer.

Samuel was his Christian name, and she blushed at the occasional glances he directed her way. He was a broad-shouldered man and pleasing to look at, for all that he could have been her brother, with his oval face and queue of natural, deep brown hair. In other features they departed: His eyes were hazel; hers were a very heavily lashed deep blue. Her mother used to tell her that her eyes were her best feature.

“The same cannot be said of your hair, alas,” Mama would go on to say. She would speak of “taming” the masses of thick, unruly curls that tumbled over her daughter’s shoulders and down to the small of her back. She would often chide Isabella for her
hair’s “wildness,” as if it were Isabella’s fault that it was so hard to care for, and that she herself should do something about it. Even now, as they rode, yet another tendril escaped from the braided circlet she had arranged atop her head. It bobbed against her cheek with a faint tickle like the kiss of a butterfly. She supposed she looked rather strange, glassy-eyed from lack of air, and her hair springing loose in mad ringlets, like Chinese fireworks.